Maybe it's a deeper problem related to western liberal notions that anyone can do anything if they just "set their mind to it". We have a glut of "professionals

Maybe it's a deeper problem related to western liberal notions that anyone can do anything if they just "set their mind to it". We have a glut of "professionals" across industries and institutions who don't really have any business being there, but the machine requires that they appear to be useful, and so mechanisms emerge to satisfy this constraint. A consequence in science is a long list of poor quality junk publications, and few people are willing to acknowledge the nakedness of the emperor for fear of losing their positions, but because doing so may betray their own redundancy.